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Comment by sircastor | Hacker News Reader

I generally agree with you. I use my Mac with most of the windows overlapped most of the time. But occasionally I need them side-by-side to do some work. Typically referencing documents or code. Fortunately the introduction of this looks to just be an optional feature rather than a dictated "way things are".

An overlapped/stacked interface is fine a lot of the time, but the flexibility is important.

What really drives me crazy is the 100% tiled-interface. I feel like something important is just below the tiles, but I can't see it.

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You can solve that easily with the free rectangle app today.

Yes, I actually use Rectangle on both my work and personal laptops.

I have Rectangle installed and the only feature I use is dragging a window to the left or right edge to use half the screen. I don't even know if that's from Rectangle or macOS. The other thing I do is double-click edges to expand to edge of screen, which I assume is macOS.

It had let unable shortcuts to snap windows into various tile layout type configurations

The last time I tried Rectangle it didn't have any customization, just those predefined areas and nothing else. I really like how window management is done in KDE Plasma.

BetterTouchTool is not free but has the customization you seek. I’ve used it for about a decade now

If you get the paid version then customization is an option, just FYI. Not sure when this was introduced but it’s been working well for me.

I love the Rectangle app. The problem is that the average Mac user has no idea this exists at all.

So when Joe Windows considers switching over to Mac, they see that there's no equivalent to the Windows snapping feature that's been in their OS since Windows 7, and they might think macOS is inferior.

I personally don't need this feature from Apple but I think they needed to add it for their own business needs.

To add more clarity here in case it's helpful: If you open the Rectangle app's settings menu and open the last tab (looks like a gear), you can play around with the "Gaps between windows" setting.

I have this set to 15px, so when I drag my app windows around, they snap to a grid with 15px spaces between the windows. Dunno why I find it so satisfying, but it really scratches an itch in my brain.

You can always run apps full screen. Then it's possible to have them side by side.

I'm thoroughly confused. How can a full screen program allow for a side by side?

The maximize button has an option to go into a split screen mode where you get two "half full" screens (i.e. side by side but still hide the menu bar, window chrome).

Full screen is a mode that takes away the ability to move windows, and removes their chrome. You can have two windows in this mode, and they will just take up the whole screen between them.

I get a bunch of ui issues doing full screen, and though I use Magnet for snapping, I want something that stays snapped. Looks like this will do it.

I wish there was a keyboard shortcut to run apps full screen

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